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TURNING MY FACE TO THE SUN

BY DEBORAH WYATT FELLOWS

We are among the people found on every lake who don’t take their dock out until “the last possible moment.” Our boat waits stoically in its hoist, and the kayaks are still stowed at the shoreline after the leaves are long gone. And I know we share with others those mornings when we wake to discover we’ve waited one moment too long: a fierce north wind rages, and in its clutches is a heavy, wet snow. Oops.

More times than I’d share here I’ve stood shivering at the boat launch a mile from our house and shielded my eyes against the snow coming at me horizontally, trying to catch a glimpse of my husband and our boat. One year he emerged from a blinding snow that swirled along the lake’s surface in a funnel pattern, his face nearly frostbitten, taking the brunt of the storm head on as he tried to navigate to the launch’s dock. In a fit of fancy, we even left the swim raft in the water one year. But after a sudden bluster came up in the night, …

... Read the rest of Deborah Wyatt Fellows's column in the October 2016 issue of Traverse, Northern Michigan's Magazine.